Beatrix, Which Starts with 'B', Which Rhymes with 'T', Which Stands for Trouble

Last week was a banner one for Baby Bea. On Tuesday she and Bernie knocked over a very elderly woman at the vet's office. Bea was holding Bernie's leash, and when the woman and her small dog came in Bea and Bern walked up to her. Before I could corral them, the elderly woman shrieked, "No! He bites!" While backing away from Bernie and Bea she tripped and took quite a spill. The woman was alright, but there was a miserable few minutes while the vet staff swarmed the woman to provide comfort (saying, "that's okay; I fall sometimes too," as if the woman were a child, which, advance warning, if anyone says that to me when I'm 80 I'm going to spit on them), while Bernie and Bea whined and struggled to get away from me and back to horsing around the waiting room.

Then on Wednesday I took Bea (sans Bern) to the Audubon Center in East L.A. with some mama and baby pals. It's such a lovely spot for children to take a turn at being feral. There's no play structure; just a muddy stream, some rocks, a little cave, and some picnic tables and benches for the mamas and the papas to sit back and watch. Trouble is, there's a cement-lined mossy pond/fountain that has no sides. On Bea's fiftieth attempt to walk right into the stanky frog water, she got past me. I could've made a dive for her, but I figured the water would only go up to her chest and it wasn't worth grabbing her by the hair. But I underestimated the fountain: for one terrible moment she was just a mop of yellow hair and fear-filled blue eyes beneath the filmy green surface. She was only under for a second, maybe two, but I'm probably going to remember that moment for the rest of my life. She was fine after I yanked her out; she coughed up a touch of water, got her clothes changed, and then went right back to raising hell. But I won't recovery so easily.

Friday I took her to the children's museum in Pasadena with a friend and her toddler. Bea was dancing in the sidewalk fountain (video from another day here) and I was chatting it up. She was there, a few feet away, and then she wasn't. I scanned the courtyard. I scanned it again. Gone. I dropped my stuff and ran around to all the areas of the museum searching. Finally, after a few indescribably painful minutes of unadulterated panic, a staff member saw me searching and brought me to Bea, who had wandered back to the tricycles and had happily played by herself until it was noticed that she was unaccompanied. That few minutes of being away from her has turned out to be far more traumatic to me than even the pond submersion. I was able to fall asleep that night, but I woke up around 2am flush with remembered panic and couldn't get back to sleep. I've been feeling edgy ever since.

Three big incidents in one week leave me feeling like I'm not doing a very good job of keeping up with Bea. The truth is, I am just so tired all the time and she... she is just ridiculous. The kid is 100% balls to the wall. She does not sit in a stroller. She does not sit in a high chair. She does not sit. This is what she does in a chair:



Know what's most terrifying about this video? Two minutes later she was fine and doing the same thing again. There is no degree of trauma that will slow her down. Here's Bea on a slide:



None of the things that happened last week made even a dent in her momentum. She didn't even care about being separated from me at the museum. Another kid would have been crying for mom, but nope; Bea was grateful to finally be able to walk right in front of the big kids' trike lane without me pissing on her good time. Don't get me wrong: I admire her chutzpah and respect her limitless will. I don't want to change her, but it does get a touch exhausting now that I'm super-sized.

And of course well-meaning people try to help me out by letting me know when she's doing something that seems especially dangerous. On the same visit the kids' museum last Friday a mom chipped in to let me know that Bea was eating a piece of bamboo while she was playing in the water. I'd seen Bea doing it, but I let it go because she was quietly chewing while staying in one spot. I get that the mom was trying to help me out and there is a somewhat legitimate concern with Bea eating fibrous plants that have been sitting in peepee water (and she has been occasionally vomiting ever since so maybe there's a connection?), but I just wanted to say, "Lady, that's the least hazardous thing she's done all day. Is that really worth a pregnant lady getting up?" But fine. Bamboo confiscated.

Bea is too young for discipline, rules, or following directions, but strong, fast, determined, and -- most difficult of all -- completely fearless. A partial list of things Bea does not fear: busy streets, dogs, bunnies, heights, bottomless moss ponds, being separated from mama, falling, pain, death, dismemberment, blood,  dirt, and strangers. I can respect that: the kid has a penchant for mayhem. I'm a big believer in "free range" parenting; of foregoing kneepads and paranoia and letting kids explore their world even if that results in a minor injury here or there. When did we get the idea that childhood should be gutless?

Bea and I have the "tank agreement" -- I let her be the wild beast of a child that she is and she let's me have my time to read and write; there are no scheduled educational activities or esoteric rules, just a lot of mommy/toddler parallel play as I like to think of it. This is just my own particular spin on the much larger movement of Free Range Parenting, about which there is much writing on the web. I particularly recommend http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/. Recently Kelly Hogaboom wrote a post comparing the opening credits of Sesame Street in the 70s, when the kids played on abandoned agricultural equipment and rode horses bareback with nary a bottle of Purell in sight, and now, when the kids all have helmets and play on mass-produced playground equipment in an orderly fashion -- read and watch here.

But here are a few of the many problems with parenting my free-range toddler:

1. I'm not as quick as I usually am at ripping her out of harm's way because I am HUGE and so painfully tired all the time, which makes keeping up with her a struggle. Nothing in any parenting rhetoric suggests that it's desirable or even okay to let an 18-month-old out of your sight in crowded public places. I'm super not into it. I hope it never happens again.  
2. But Bea is really, really, really fast (remember that she comes from a family of track stars -- no fucking joke). She starts out every day as if we put Mountain Dew Xtreme Energy cut with Red Bull and PCP in her baby bottle and is only getting more adroit by the day. 
3. She freaks people out with her fearlessness and I get the blowback for it; something that I tend to not handle well. I just read a Motherlode post on unwanted advice (here) and I have to say: unwanted advice is not really our problem. It's happened. I get pissed. I am, for better or for worse (usually worse), not afraid to tell a stranger to fuck off for an out of line comment. But most of the time folks really do think they're helping me out in a nonjudgemental way by pointing out something crazy that Bea's doing and I don't fault them for that. They really are trying to help. But gah! I get so frustrated. Yeah, I fucking know she's about to go down the slide face first. She's awesome at it. Enjoy the show and leave me alone.

I might not be so bristly about it all, except that I'm tired, crabby and 27 weeks pregnant. I don't feel good... at all... ever. (Is that too melodramatic of me to say? I'm pretty fucking miserable.) But I'm trying to keep giving Bea the play opportunities that she craves and get out of the house once in a while. After all, I need exercise and socializing too! But we're about to cut waaaaayyy back on the outings. It can't be good for my Tummy Buddy to have 100 proof fear running through my veins when Bea does something nutty. I know playing alone in our small yard is not Bea's first choice, but such is life. It's going to be a hard couple of months, but pretty soon I'm gonna give Bea exactly what she wants: a playmate who may rival her ballsiness or may be a poetic foil for her jackal ways. We'll just have to wait and see. Either way, I think she'll be into him and if she could reason, she'd see that a brother is worth laying low for a little bit.

jjk

Introducing.... Tobb Warren

I can't remember where I read it, but I came across the advice to get older children a baby doll of their own to help them adjust to a new baby. I'm pretty sure Bea is just too young to have any concept of what's growing in my tummy until he gets here, but hey! Why not give it a shot? It couldn't hurt, right?

But did you know... the doll isle at the toy store is filled with crap. Just schlocky crap. Ultra-feminized baby girls with big eyelashes and make annoying sounds and piss their stupid plastic-y pants. Blah! After extensive research, we settled on a Cabbage Patch baby because 1) they aren't pieces of crap, 2) you can order them directly from Babyland General Hospital (a.k.a. the Cabbage Patch Kids website) and pick out the exact hair, eye and skin color that you want, 3) they remind both Alden and I of the dolls we had as kids and that makes us feel happy and retro and like the entire world isn't being sucked into a giant Pixar/Disney vortex of cheesy licensed goods, and 4) there's no real difference between the boy and girl dolls so if she wants a baby girl later we can just buy the doll a different outfit and change her name.

He was a little more expensive than we were hoping for, but he's exactly like the dolls of yesteryear that I recall held up incredibly well to repeated beatings. A typo on the website listed his name as "Tobb Warren" instead of "Toby Warren," which is listed on his birth certificate and adoption parents, but Tobb  stuck. It's easier for Bea to say anyway. So far she's not super into him, but we've been putting bibs on him, swaddling him, changing his clothes, pointing out his diaper, cradling him, "breastfeeding" him, and just generally trying to get her familiar with the things that you do with a newborn baby. Like I said, it probably won't make a lick of difference, but hey! why not try?

jjk

Stoopid Sun and Its Stoopid Burning Capabilities

I keep reading scary shit about sunscreens, most notably that SPFs are wildly exaggerated and many of them contain crazy hormone disrupting chemicals (source here). I hate mineral sunscreens (though I'm optimistic about the Badger Balm that I just ordered) because they're difficult to rub in, leave a white film on the skin, and are expensive, but everything else scares me, especially considering the quantities in which both Bea and I need it, given that we are incredibly pale people who live in the sunshine-y-est place on earth. Boo!

The compromise I've come up with is that I just try to avoid the mid-day sun (from 11ish-2ish) and wear things that cover as much skin as possible (including hats) to minimize our sunscreen use. Both Alden and I have ultra-fair skin that is translucent and pinkish, so, predictably, our child is shockingly pale. (Overheard from people we passed on the street: "That is one white baby.") Plus, I'm prone to melasma while pregnant. For lax application of sunscreen before a midday hike last week I am now rewarded with dark liver-ish spots on my sun-prone parts that will (hopefully!) go away when the baby is born. Until then, I have the hands of a 90-year-old. Boo again.

So pasty ladies that we are, Bea and I, need to cover ourselves up. Bea had a lightweight long sleeve shirt that was cool enough to wear in the heat, but, trouble is, she grew out of it. It came from the Little Seed, a boutique in Larchmont Village, really near to my house that has the fun fact of being owned by Soleil Moon Frye, the actress that played Punky Brewster. (Sidebar: We go to music class there taught by Heidi Swedberg, a fantastic singer and ukelele player who, fun fact again, played the ill-fated Susan on Seinfeld. Bea and I went to five classes before I placed where I recognized her from, mostly because she is so bright and lovely in real life that it didn't occur to me that I might know her as a proverbial wet blanket whose death was a punchline. Living in L.A. is weird sometimes.)

ANYWAY, I went back to the store to buy her a new t-shirt and discovered that they were $26... for a plain, organic cotton dyed t-shirt, which is a lot of money to spent on a teeny tiny shirt. Right? Honestly, if I could afford it I'd probably buy four more, but I can't so I don't. I've been trying to figure out how it came to pass that I bought the first one. My current theory is that Alden and I went out to an early dinner in Larchmont sometime last fall when I was working (and thus had cash) and that we had a substantial amount of wine with our dinner. Then we walked over the Little Seed for a bit of post-dinner shopping because I can't picture me buying a $26 infant tee unless I was--at least--tipsy.

But good news! The Little Seed just put out a line with Target and it is indeed just as cute as the stuff in stores. Look. I got a towel, a blanket, and some pants for Unborn Baby Keith today at thrillingly low prices (especially compared to the boutique). But the bad news? There are no long-sleeved tees in the line. And all of it is for infants, not big girls like Bea.

So fine. I guess I really do have to spent fifteen minutes every day coating both Bea and myself in stoopid chalky mineral sunscreen. Boo boo boo.

jjk

Wordless Wednesday: Rocking Chair Edition

jjk

On Exiting Through The Gift Shop

Every so often I get a little too impressed with myself. This is one of those times. Hence this rather long and possibly uninteresting post.

A disclaimer: Alden and I are not big Disney fans. In fact, we mightily resent Disney's stronghold on American childhoods with all this princess bullshit. We died a little when Disney commandeered the Muppets. And for my adult theme park dollar, I think the much lower priced Knott's Berry Farm is the way to go in So-Cal, but Disney really does have the best stuff for teeny tiny kids.

Disneyland is also a bold choice in the summer, and perhaps especially so on the Fourth of July. But here's my thinking: most folks go to Disneyland on the Fourth for the fireworks. Therefore getting there early and leaving before dark would allow us to miss the real crowds. Bonus: it's an off-limits day for many season pass holders, who are exactly the kind of folks to usually fill up the park first thing in the morning. Plus! Sunday mornings knock out the church going demographic. And! It was the middle day in a three day weekend so we'd dodge the worst traffic. I seriously put a lot of thought into this and I was right!

We left the house at 7:15 on a Sunday morning and, with stopping for fast food (don't judge; with every hash brown nugget that I passed back to Bea I said in a clear, sing-songy voice, "this is a sometimes food" just in case she got the wrong idea), parking, and riding the tram over to the park, we walked through the gates of Disneyland at 8:15am. The park was crowded, but not a mad house (our longest wait was 15 minutes for the Peter Pan ride). A big part of this is that between me being pregnant and Bea being 17 months old, most of the big ticket rides (Splash Mountain, Matterhorn, Space Mountain, Indiana Jones, plus the lesser coasters and, the much loved and soon to be closing for cheesy prequel-izing pod race bullshit retrofit, Star Tours) were off limits anyway. Bea's reaction to the rides was joyful, but mild. Nothing scared her, which meant nothing deeply thrilled her either. I knew she was a little young for all this, but now that I think about it: how can skeletons warning that "dead men tell no tales" be scary when you have no idea what dead, telling, tales, and skeletons are? Let alone Captain Jack Sparrow. Oh the wonder of being new to the world and having grinchy parents -- she doesn't even know what princesses are.



After a three hour whirlwind of ride riding, when the park was getting fuller by the minute, we left a pleasantly overwhelmed Bea to chill in her stroller for a spell while we walked around. On our walking tour we sought out the Monsanto House of the Future, the bizarro 50s fantasy house made entirely of plastics (because that was thought to be a good thing! also: MONSANTO!) that used to be the centerpiece of Tomorrowland. I realized how stupid this was now, but I thought it was encapsulated in the Innoventions Building. Turns out, Disney feels no irony and replaced the future home with  (eventually) the Innoventions Dream Home, a painfully tacky McMansion-style walk-through infomercial for some cheesy home building corporation, Microsoft and HP. The Monsanto dream house was, yes, horrifically toxic and sponsored by the evilest of the evil mega corporations, but cleaver and represented some of the most visionary design of its day. The new dream house is tacky, low brow, and insultingly heavy handed with its advertising. In the future they have digital picture frames that display digital photos stored inside the frame! And also? They have those in the present and here's where you can get them. LAME! Also: my dad has had one of those for, like, three years now. Fucking future my ass. It was easily the most disappointing thing we saw all day. The cast members there all wore jersey supporting some nondescript sports team that made them look more like Bennigan's waitstaff than bearers of futuristic dreams.

BUT! Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, the Inno-fucking-ventions Dream House did have some magic: it put Bea to sleep IN HER STROLLER for the first time since she was nine-months-old. I thought it would never happen again. I figured we'd have to leave the park around 1pm because that was the longest she could possibly last without a nap. Turns out it just took a relentless battery of frenetic amusements followed up with the stoopid, but ghost town-y quiet, dream house (aparently word has already gotten out about this being the worst thing at the park). When I realized she had passed out I breathlessly took a picture for posterity. Look:



I know it's evil, but we took advantage of her nap to eat an ice cream sundae without having to share and her getting all sticky and messy. When she awoke an hour later, refreshed and cheery, we went to the less popular attractions like the Jungle Cruise, River Boat, and, our personal favorite, the Enchanted Tiki Room. Maybe I'm projecting, but I think the Tiki Room might have been Bea's favorite too. She clapped along and pointed at Fritz and José as they sung. It's likely the attraction she most "gets": she knows what flowers and birds are and she understands that they don't usually sing so it's crazy to her when they do. Plus, there's catchy music with fun rhythms and, most importantly to me, no relationship to any other Disney property. Both Alden and I have a soft spot for the super old school stuff at Disneyland. You know, the rides where you can still here the mechanical parts whirring and clacking.

During our (surprisingly delicious and reasonably priced, at least by our warped L.A. standards) lunch (bonus: I had no problem finding vegetarian food to cater to my meat aversion) Bea fell off a chair, hit her chin on the table, and cut open her gums with a molar. There was a substantial amount of blood, but kiddo shook it off and went back to exploring in two minutes flat. She rode in her stroller, she walked on her new leash (pictured below and don't judge: that kid is insanely fast and not afraid to run far, far, away from the only people she's ever really known), she bobbed and weaved through crowds. Nary a temper tantrum all day. She was amazingly resilient and unflappable.



I know I've been mentioning it a lot lately, but just in case you missed my kvetching, I'm having terrible back pain again with this pregnancy. (Sidebar: my acupuncturist said the pain is because I have "such open birthing hips" that all my muscles are clenching my hips shut so I can continue to walk, though I am indeed, having more and more trouble walking every day.) I probably wouldn't have even attempted Disneyland except that I happened to have gone along with my sister and her family when I was 28 weeks pregnant with Bea and survived alright despite the pain. But this time it was my back that ultimately did us in after almost eight hours.

We again were delighted by no traffic on the way home. Eventually Bea went to bed and was woken up by fireworks at the stoopid Paramount lot, which is stoopidly only a few blocks from our house. So she slept in our bed and ended the day just as she started it (because our neighbors' illegal fireworks woke her up in the middle of the night before): snuggled in my armpit and kicking her heel into my thigh. By all measures, the day was a success. We had fun, Bea had fun, experiences were had, joy was felt, passive voice was used. And I'm especially proud to say we managed to not purchase a single piece of crap other than three really awesome "elongates" (that's the technical term) for our Penny Passport:



I have to admit that I was a little emotional about the trip. I felt like it was our last big outing with Bea as an only child. Intellectually, I don't feel like I'm depriving Bea by having another baby while she's still so young, but I do feel a closing to an era coming on, the era in which Bea was our sole and willful overlord. I know that a second baby will just bring even more love and fancy into our lives, but it feels great, for now at least, to be blissfully undivided in our devotion to her. This big Disneyland outing was a big ol' messy display of our guileless Bea-myopia. And it was lovely. But the next time we do something like this it will be very different...

jjk

Come As You Are

I subscribe a number of Yahoo groups for moms in L.A. I don't always look at the digests when they dribble in several times a day, but if I have a spare moment sometimes I give it a gander. The main one I look at has about 2000 members and sometimes there's really useful information like the recent thread about which local parks had good water play areas. Sometimes there's fascinating and brutal brawls over things like circumcision and vaccines that allow me to marvel at how incredibly polarizing motherhood can be. And sometimes there's moms sharing or asking for advice about the many mundane things that may or may not affect us mother-types: how much to give household workers for Christmas (not a dilemma I've personally had to solve) or how to deal with in-laws.

Anyway, last night I read the most incredible post. The basic gist was this mom was writing into the group to tell them about this "random odd little resource" called Ikea (there's two L.A. area Ikeas and the Burbank one is about 15 minutes from both East L.A. and Pasadena where most of the Yahoo Group moms live). She mentions that she "pretty much never ever" takes her baby shopping because she doesn't want her daughter to think that's what adults do all day. But it turns out, this mother discovered, that she had a lot of fun taking her older infant to the store and letting her ride in a shopping cart for the first time. The mother marveled at the ergonomics (her word) of the shopping cart and the wonders of the adjustable seatbelt. She discovered, seemingly for the first time, that you can let your kid play with crap in the store that you have no intention of buying. She even met a mom who goes there just for fun! (And yeah, Alden and I go for 99 cent breakfasts and sundry items like dish brushes at least once a month because Bea has a good time "testing" the toys out while we sip our coffee, but you don't have to be Ikea fiends like us to know that it exists and sells lots of kids' stuff, some of which is awesome.)

I have to admit, my first, second, and third impulses are to mock this mom that just couldn't wait to share the news about that obscure little Swedish shop out in Burbank (and then adding "I wonder what other strange little gems this city of ours has to offer?"), but my fourth impulse is to wonder what that woman would think of me if she saw my semi-feral toddler licking the handlebar of the shopping cart (and I never sanitize those things because I'm a believer in the power of germs to build immune systems) or trudging through a restaurant with mud on her knees and food on her face waving a fork in one hand and hucking ice cubes with the other. (Sidebar: I'm amazed at Bea's ability to cultivate goodwill in restaurants -- and thank goodness! Earlier this week she actually reached over to another table and pulled food off a woman's plate. Mercifully, the woman thought it was cute and then distracted Bea for 15 minutes while Alden and I finished our food. And last weekend Bea sprayed a woman with coffee creamer and the woman, herself a mother to a toddler, just laughed and shrugged it off. We're on a streak of good luck with Bea's wildness this week.)

That message post is an incredibly succinct documentation of a way of parenting that is radically different from my own. Presumably this woman has some household help if she's never taken her kid shopping. And hey! I'd probably have help too if I could afford it so don't let me get all high and mighty, but I kind of like that Bea and I just do everything together. For forty-five hours a week it's just the two of us (plus Bernie). She grocery shops, she Targets, she walks Bernie, she takes Bernie to his oncology appointments, she gets stuck in traffic, she watches the View, she pisses me off, she gets pissed off at me, and so on. And then when Alden is home we do everything just the same except that diaper changing and bottle pouring become his responsibility. So while the Ikea Mom creates an overlapping world between her daughter and her in which undesirable activities don't exist, Bea and I just live together in the same boring old world in which very few things are censored (the only reason she hasn't learned to say "fuck" yet is that she's not much of a talker). Our household is a come as you are kind of joint. There are upsides and downsides to this way of living and I wouldn't prescribe it for everyone, but it works for us.

When Bea was still a proper baby another mom mentioned that she hasn't yet taken her same-aged infant to the grocery store and I was HORRIFIED. I watched her for a long time after and felt positive that I could see a shorter fuse in her; like she was more easily frustrated by trying to hold on an adult conversation while her baby interrupted her. I theorized that it was because her ample household help had allowed her to not be "hazed." Those first few months home full time alone with a baby are hard on a parent, but (my theory at least) confidence grows out of those tough times. I liked that way of thinking because it made it feel like I had earned something, but now I'm wondering if there might be an entirely different way of seeing things. Being always "on duty" with Bea means that a lot of our time isn't "quality" (i.e. watching TV, driving, lying in bed while she walks on my back, shopping etc.) and I can see why some parents like to have lots of breaks so that they can always put their best selves forward for their children. It's not what I want for my family, but I'm not going to shit on it either.

I knew another mom that had a totally different perspective on parenting as me and things that I think of as totally normal, like taking a bit of pleasure in picking out the clothes Bea wears or going for walks in the park. She marveled like I was the craziest lady ever wasting my time putting a shirt on Bea or dragging her out in the heat and dirt for a hike. It never occurred to her that she might be in the minority on these rather simple and uncontroversial aspects of my parenting; that maybe she was odd for never going to the park and dressing her baby in diaper covers and blankets. I didn't say anything because there's nothing really wrong with her way of doing things; it's just not my way. But she was quick to let me know that she thought I wasted money buying clothes for Bea and going all the way to park to walk when I could just stroll down Santa Monica Blvd. So annoying. I don't want to be like that mom so I'm trying to restrain my judgement of the mom on the message board.

Okay, but c'mon! Ikea a "random odd little resource"?! How could I not poke fun?

jjk

Wordless Wednesday: Tub Edition

jjk

The Yogurt Cookie Solution

Starting over the weekend I seem to have crossed over some invisible threshold from simply "pregnant" to "getting pretty goddamn pregnant." I'm now 25 weeks, so just a week shy of the third trimester and it's all starting to catch up with me. I feel suddenly heavy and cumbersome and more lethargic. But what's really getting me is the back pain. Since just a few weeks into this pregnancy I've had intermittent pain easily remedied by occasional acupuncture and nightly stretches, but over the weekend that pain escalated to the point that I'd really rather not do anything, like, at all. I'm serious. Yesterday I watched a whopping ten episodes of The Office via Netflix streaming. I just locked Bea, Bernie and I into my bedroom and plied her with yogurt covered cookies (the yogurt makes them healthy, right?) to keep her occupied while we tickled and giggled and cuddled and watched poor Michael Scott make an ass out of himself ten times over.

Feeling a little guilty about my extreme lethargy, this morning we all went on a family walk before Alden left for work. Two flat and slow miles and now I'm back in bed queuing up the Office eps. I get so tired so quickly. Plus everything I eat and drink sits in my throat burning my esophagus. The worst of it is a general feeling of weakness: when I pick Bea up I feel like I might drop her, like my muscles just aren't working right. It's coming back to me -- this is the feeling I had during the last miserable months of my pregnancy with Bea.

I know things are going to get hairy before the baby is born (and well, also hairy after the baby is born), but I'd like to keep the activity level up for as long as possible. I know once I give into not doing anything all day, physical activity will get even more difficult, but when my body is begging for rest I feel like that might be a terrible time to push myself. It's a difficult balance to strike.

In the aim of staying active for as long as possible, I have an acupuncture appointment this evening (I leave as soon as Alden gets home and drive to the west side) and I think I'm going to start going to prenatal yoga at least once a week (also in the evenings). Failing that, I'm going to need a lot of yogurt covered cookies.

jjk

Project Turtleneck*

Alden and I assumed that we would only have girls. A month after getting the news that I'm growing a baby with a wang, I'm still in shock that there's gonna be a little guy in the house. I had been harboring a nonsense delusion that it only "made sense" for us to have girls, never minding that a baby's sex is (more or less) randomly selected and that nature doesn't have a narrative agenda.

The biggest hurdle we've encountered to getting ready to be parents to a son has been coming up with a name. For a girl, we had a list of names that we loved and it was just a matter of finding the one that felt right. For a boy though? We've used baby name explorers, baby naming machines, and baby name lists. (There are an obscene amount of resources on the internet for baby naming!) None of this was needed to name Bea: we had a list of names and her's is the one that stuck. Finally for our fellow, I think we have a winner and not via any of this internet age belly aching. I met a baby once with this name when I was pregnant with Bea and I had a moment of sadness that we wouldn't be able to steal the name for our girl. While not widely used in the states, the baby's mother told me that the name was fairly common in her native Sweden. I suddenly remembered it a few weeks ago and urgently emailed Alden at work all about the name, it's derivation, my concerns about it and a ranking of my preferred spellings. He's happily on board and it's more or less a go, which is a huge load off! I have my concerns about it and most of the folks I've mentioned it to have been luke warm about it, but it just feels right. Likewise, Beatrix has never been my favorite name; just the right one for that baby at that time.

But on to our next dilemma: circumcision. I'm anti. Not "it's a form of torture" anti, just "eh, if you don't have to do minor surgery on a newborn then why do it?" anti. Alden was pro. Not "I'll never be able to cope if his penis is different than mine" pro, just "doesn't it make sense to do it since I am?" pro. He had all the normal concerns about having a son who's genitals looked different from his own and possible health complications of an intact foreskin.

I let the issue lie for a few weeks and then over the weekend I pulled a video of a newborn circumcision up on his computer and told him to watch it. He obliged and then quickly and politely moved over to the anti camp with me. I didn't see the video, but according the Alden it wasn't horrifying, just a little more involved than he'd previously believed. Plus, a quick googling of some stats reassured him that our son wouldn't be the only dude in gym class with a foreskin (in 2006 56% of babies born in the U.S. were circumcised [source]) and that most experts don't consider circumcision to be medically beneficial (or harmful, for that matter). Yes, at some point our son might wonder why his ween looks different from dad's, but I don't think it'll be that hard to explain: "Circumcision was really common when dad was born, but less so when you were born and we chose not to do it. You can elect to have it done later if it bothers you."

Project Turtleneck is officially stamped "mission accomplished" and we think we might have the name worked out, but I still don't feel like I've quite wrapped my head around what it means to be a mama to a boy. But that's okay, right? I think is just one of those things I'm going to have to work out as I go along just like pretty much everything else.

jjk

* Credit must be given to my friend Carrie for the title of this post. Oh, and for the suggestion about circumcision videos. Thanks!

Marxist Revolutions and Other Imperfect Solutions

Look at me! I'm featured over on the Stir as Baby Mama of the Week. How neat is that?

In other news... I've been looking for more classes to go to with Bea since our music class breaks for the summer and I'm getting tired of shoving my ever-growing self into a swimsuit for toddler swim class every week. So imagine how excited I was to hear that a nearby children's art studio was offering a few toddler appropriate classes a week. With joy in my heart called them to find out the times, but lo! Guess how much they cost? $115 a month for a once weekly class that last 45 minutes. That's $28.75 per 45 minute class!

Perhaps if the classes were led by the reanimated corpse of Picasso and required extensive use of gold leaf I'd feel better about the expense, but we're talking about teaching art to a kid that eats sidewalk chalk and then shits blue chalk in her pants. I don't get it. I realize the studio has expenses and that folks need to make a living, but $28.75 for a 45 minute class for a not-yet-two-year-old seems beyond exorbitant.

Related: I called a preschool to ask for a tour and they were incredulous at the suggestion. Like, "who do you think you are, lady, thinking you can just call us up for a tour?" And this was no schmancy Waldorf or Reggio Emilio kind of operation. This was our local Presbyterian outfit. Panicked, I attended a seminar on preschool admissions meant for neurotic over-achieving city women. I gleamed next to nothing from the seminar, but I did get a chance to ask, "Hey, so why does every preschool in L.A. treat parents like they should be fighting to gain access to their incredibly valuable limited resource? Where aren't there just enough good preschools?" The short answer is that real estate is expensive here, but I think the reality is that preschools are marketed like Beanie Babies with artificial shortages driving up demand. Seriously. I am a preschool conspiracy theorist and I realize that's kind of crazy, but I think that's why folks shouldn't move straight from Berkeley to L.A. Also at this preschool seminar was a German woman there who looked like she was realizing--for the first time--that America was overly reliant on free trade and social Darwinism. She seemed sad, worried and uprooted. I felt for her.

So to all this I say let's get together mamas and make our own unlicensed preschools and art studios. Fuck those assholes and their overpriced high-end classist bullshit. Let's make a Marxist revolution out of finger paints and board books. Who's with me mamas?

Someday I'll get my wits about me enough to write about my previous experiences with collectivism in the Berkeley student co-op system (spoiler alert: they weren't great!), but in the meantime I'm going to start seriously investigating ways to create more experiential opportunities for Bea and Unborn Baby Keith that don't involve stoopid overpriced art studios and blowing preschool admission officials. Until then, here's a video of Bea getting personal with a sidewalk fountain:

jjk

I Have a New Riddle For the Sphinx

We're in the middle of several annoying quagmires: our foreclosed rental, our disappearing security deposit, coping with Bernie's chemo, finding a preschool for Bea, figuring out what to name our boy, redecorating the kids' room, finding affordable classes and activities for Bea and I to do during the day (more on that tomorrow), and so on. I'm up to ears in projects. It's a good thing there isn't a goddamned single watchable show on TV right now or else I might be tempted to relax in front of the TV from time to time. (I don't want to watch the Real Housewives of New Jersey -- I have to.) But the issue that's been chewing Alden and I up for the longest is The Great Double Stroller Debate. I'd been meaning to write about this for ages, but I just read Baby Rabies plea for help and it reminded me that I might be able to solicit some advice here.

Even though I plan on wearing the new baby much of the time, having kids 20 months apart pretty much damns me to a double stroller. But I worry about investing a huge amount of money in a double when it's already a challenge to get Bea to sit in her single. Still, I love to hike at least a few times a week and I'm sure I'll be eager to get some exercise and fresh air once the baby is here and I can hold my bladder and touch my toes again. And since hiking is one of the main purposes that I want the stroller for, it makes sense to get something with inflated wheels and off-road capability like the Bob Dualie or the BumbleRide Indie Twin. Both can be outfitted with a bar that allows them to hold the carseat so I don't have to worry about waking the newborn for walks.
 

But those things are expensive! Like, in the ballpark of $600 expensive! And very difficult to find used. So instead of getting a double jogging stroller I could carry Bea in our hiking backpack and push the new baby in Bea's trusty old City Mini or I could put the baby in an Ergo and push Bea (against her will usually) in the City Mini. I would just suck it up and spend the money on a good jogger because it's very important to me that I not lose my mobility when I'm chasing after two kids all day, but I worry that Bea will refuse to sit and it'll do me no good anyway. Though, if I do buy it and it doesn't work I'm pretty sure I can get nearly all my money back selling it second-hand since these things are so hard to come by.

But say I forego the expensive double jog stroller and get something just for city trips. Sit 'n' Stands are affordable, but they are, in my humble opinion, giant behemoths that I'd never be able to force through the isles of Trader Joe's. Since I've been puzzling over this problem for months already, I've been keeping an eye on strollers at the playground and I ran into the Joovy Caboose.
At $140, the cheapest stroller I've found and it has a much smaller footprint than most doubles. Plus and plus! Also, the Bea seat is just a little rear-facing platform so I'll resent Bea much less when she refuses to sit. The problem is that this stroller is much more appropriate when the new baby is 6 months or older because reclining the front seat makes the back seat mostly unusable. You can put a carseat in it, but again, squishes out the little seat.

And then there's the City Mini Double, which is cheaper than the jog strollers at around $400. The problem with this one is that I already struggle a little bit with the handling of my City Mini single when I take it off road (it's not meant to be a hiking stroller) and I think my issues might be even worse with a heavier stroller with more kids in it. But on the plus side, this also can hold a carseat.

My need for something that folds up to fit in the back of my hatchback and can steer through a crowded farmers market eliminates the Graco DuoGlider or the Contours (even though this one is cool because you can change the configuration of the seats; Baby Jogger has a similar stroller with a smaller footprint, but it's quite expensive). Bea's demand for nice views and freedom eliminate the tantalizingly small Phil and Ted Vibe (also -- so expensive!). Though they're not great for newborns and (I think) can't hold carseats, there are always the standard double umbrella strollers like the Maclaren Twin or the Combi Twin Sport.

For months I've been hoping to run into something on sale or at a consignment shop and thus have my mind made up for me by the savings, but alas, there are almost no used double strollers on the market. At this point I'm so confused that I'm thinking I just won't buy a double stroller before the baby comes. I'll just assume that I'll wear the baby and hold Bea's hand. If that doesn't work I can reexamine the situation after the baby comes, right? But my neurosis greatly prefers taking care of everything possible for the baby comes.

Advice anyone? Any folks out there have good or bad experience with any of these strollers? Am I getting worked up over nothing? Halp!

jjk

Wordless Wednesday: Crooked Bangs Edition

jjk

Chemo Day

Bernie starts his chemo back up this afternoon to treat his lymphoma. I'm pretty glum about it. The plan is for him to go once a week for six weeks to kickstart the protocol and then go every other week thereafter. We may be able to go a little less often after six months or so. We'll just have to see how everything goes. I can tell he's starting to feel a little bit sick from the cancer. He still has plenty of pep, but his tonsils are quite swollen (they're made of lymphatic tissue) and causing him to cough. He'll actually feel better, I think, once the treatments start and he gets a second remission. Dogs don't lose their fur from chemo (unless they're a dog with actual hair like poodles), but they do, usually, lose their whiskers and eyebrows. Also Bernie's tummy gets hyper pigmented from one of the drugs he gets. It's amazing how much veterinary chemo has in common with pregnancy. Oh, and his poop is about to become ultra toxic so I need to use rubber gloves when I pick it up. Fun, huh?

Chemo is expensive, but we're very, very, very lucky to have benefactors for Bernie (a.k.a. my in-laws). Still, I feel pretty terrible because I know that the same amount of money could feed a lot of rescue animals, but treating his cancer only brings down his quality of life a little bit and has already added years to our time together. I know it's selfish, but I don't want to lose my doggie yet. I know at some point we're going to have to "call it"; I have no intention of drawing his life out when he can't do the things he loves anymore, but I think we're still a ways out from that point. He was first diagnosed with lymphoma when I was about three months pregnant with Bea and his original prognosis was that he'd last about as long as my pregnancy. Instead he's seen Bea into toddlerhood, and I hope he gets to see our son grow up a bit too.

Driving out to his veterinary oncologist in Culver City (6 miles/45 minutes away -- fucking L.A.) is not my favorite thing to do, but I did some investigating and there's a playground and dogpark near his vet's office so I hope we can make a nice weekday ritual out of it. The administration of the drugs isn't too hard on him -- most weeks it's just a few minutes with an IV -- and it doesn't take terribly long so hopefully I can keep Bea contained at the vet office. She's already learned where the Sharps containers are hidden, of all things, so I'm packing my purse full of toys today to keep her from becoming a medical waste pin cushion. Off we go.

jjk

The Ikea Hångøver

My expectations were too high. You can't possibly anticipate a trip to Ikea that much and have it pay off. It is, after all, just a store. I like to go first thing on Saturday mornings, but both Bea and I fell back asleep before we could leave so we didn't make it there until 2pm, by which time it was already a madhouse. But a few meatballs and toddler-sized temper tantrums later, we got our furniture sans crib, which was unavailable due to being, in Ikea parlance, "oversold." As soon as we got home we crashed in front of the TV and played Super Mario Galaxy 2 until we beat it. Defeating Bowser yet again eclipsed Ikea as our great accomplishment of the day.

Sunday morning we set about not only assembling our furniture (a dresser and a toy chest) but embarking on several home improvement projects that we'd been waiting to do until things calmed down with our rental/foreclosure situation. To get major reorganizations done, we have to work very quickly and intensely while Bea naps in order to get things back into a baby proofed condition before she wakes up. It's a race against the nap clock. Once we'd fully dismantled the living room but before we could start putting it back together, there was a knock at the door, which in turn caused the dog to bark and Bea to start stirring out of her nap.

Just as we had begun to feel comfortable that we would stay and everything would be alright, there's a real estate agent at our door claiming to represent our former landlord. Oh, and he'd like a tour now, please, honey. At first I was pissed because he called me honey, then I was furious because they gave us no notice that they'd be coming around, but then I realized they no longer own the house and thus can't be offering to sell it to people let alone entering the property to give tours. I'm so tired of all this bullshit. Oh, and our landlord is now claiming that we still owe him rent and thus he doesn't have to give all our security deposit back, which is apparently a classic landlord-in-foreclosure move. I hate feeling like I have to fight everything, but I'm getting pissed enough to take him to small claims court. It's about $3000 he owes us so it's a little more than a small claim, if you ask me.

Anyway, rude Father's Day interruptions aside, we did make lovely progress on the kids' room and we're working on the living room. Look! Lovely new dresser:



And Bea going donkey shit:



And a snuggly little reading corner with a mattress holding a spot for the "oversold" crib:



We still have bins of clothes to wash and put away, but I think that was enough progress for one weekend. We didn't end up doing much for Father's Day other than a quick jaunt over to the park for sandwiches and a walk with Bernie and Bea, but as I was falling asleep last night Alden said, "I know I'm a good dad," and he is, and I know it and he knows it and Bea knows it and isn't that the most important thing?

jjk